


Inevitable

by Lady_Ganesh



Series: Streamverse [5]
Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cyberpunk, Cybersex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-01
Updated: 2011-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-16 03:03:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Ganesh/pseuds/Lady_Ganesh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John knows what he wants. Bonaparte wishes he didn't. Thanks to <span><a href="http://emungere.dreamwidth.org/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://emungere.dreamwidth.org/"><b>emungere</b></a></span> for betaing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inevitable

On Friday, they went dancing.

They had to be careful about the time they spent Streaming now, and Craig had a late shift, so Apollo dragged him out to this weird little bar in the middle of the gayborhood. It was small, but the music was good, and it wasn't long before John was buzzed from the dancing and covered in sweat. A couple of guys took an interest, but none of them held much appeal.

John watched Apollo spin around on top of the table and thought _he could have anybody he wanted._ Girls liked him, guys liked him, he could _move--_ he reached out an arm for John, and hell, it was close enough to closing time. He got up and danced, too, his shirt sticking to his chest, Apollo pretty and hot. John hadn't really gone out in _years,_ since the early days with Radio, and Apollo wouldn't be jealous or stupid or do something to get them tossed out. And hell, Apollo wasn't the only one who looked good on the dance floor.

The music wound down and the bartender threw everyone still hanging around out. They walked out together, Apollo leaning heavily on John. He wasn't...well, he was drunk, but he wasn't _trashed._ Just boozed up and friendly. John was glad they'd walked, though, neither of them was in any shape to drive. "We closer to my place or yours?"

Apollo shrugged. "I think yours. I can crash there, right?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Craig won't be back 'til morning." Apollo sighed. "Usually I'd hang with Hermes, but--"

"I'm sorry," John said.

"It's cool," Apollo said. "We're gonna get him out." They had an attempt scheduled for next week; Bonaparte and Craig had decided they needed better tech before they dove in more seriously, which probably meant that John would spend most of the weekend soldering interface boxes. Craig claimed that something good the cops had impounded was coming up for auction on Friday, too.

They stumbled up the stairs to John's apartment, balancing against each other when they needed to. "Thanks," Apollo said, as John gently shoved him through the door. He leaned over and gave him the most brotherly kiss John had ever gotten with tongue.

They tumbled into bed together. "You're a nice guy," Apollo said. He snuggled up against John. "This okay?"

"Yeah," John said. It'd been a long time since he'd slept with someone, even as innocently as this. Shit, he hadn't even had sex since--

Since he'd met Bonaparte. Well. Shit.

He pushed the thought out of his head and closed his eyes.

  
He woke up in the morning to a bitch of a headache and the smell of frying meat. Sausage? The good stuff he'd been saving for-- well, okay, who knew what, but his _good_ stuff with garlic and whatever it was in it.

It smelled _really good._

He walked out of the bedroom and saw Apollo tending a few strips of bacon in the pan. "Hey," he said.

Craig nodded at him. He was sitting on the couch, half his uniform off, taking a last strip of bacon off his plate. There was a smear of grease on his white t-shirt. He shouldn't have looked half as hot as he did.

"How much of my food did you _eat?"_

Craig raised an eyebrow. "Me?"

Apollo's own plate, next to the frying pan, was so greasy it had its own thick sheen. John noted disconsolately the few remaining sausage crumbs. Apollo looked back up at John. "You want any?"

"It's my food," John said, feeling like an idiot.

"You want any?" Craig repeated, like he was talking to a little kid.

John looked down at the bacon. It was the pepper bacon he'd bought last week after Bonaparte had told him he should try it sometime. Well, fuck it, he'd better try it while there was still some left to eat. He delicately picked a slice out of the pan.

"You could put it on a plate," Craig said wryly.

"Maybe after I piss." John shrugged, blew on it, and bit in. It was good. Needed something with it, eggs maybe. He'd have to ask Bonaparte what he thought. He shoved the rest of the strip into his mouth and walked to the bathroom.

He showered while he was in there, and when he got back into the kitchen the rest of the pepper bacon was gone and Craig was up at the kitchen counter making out with Apollo. He cleared his throat, loudly, and Craig spun away from Apollo so quickly John was worried for a second he'd get hurt.

"There's still some scrambled eggs left," Apollo offered. "I'm getting better at them."

John rolled his eyes, but he ate the eggs anyway. They were okay. A little runny. Bonaparte said--

He stared at his eggs. Bonaparte.

Maybe he should stop kidding himself.

  
When Apollo and Craig cleared out, he attempted to straighten his apartment and tried to postpone the inevitable, flipping through TV channels and thinking he probably ought to get his mail. _That_ lasted all of half an hour. Then he got off the couch, grabbed his astronaut pants, and ripped open a needle.

When he got to Bonaparte's the _unavailable_ signal was up; Kers figured he was programming. He tested the door anyway; the system let him through. So that was.... Well, something.

The main lobby was empty. That made sense. Bonaparte was unavailable, right? He was probably in one of the other rooms. He'd never gone into the back room on his own, and it probably wasn't smart to start now, but there must be some kind of signal. A doorbell or something....

He walked over toward the back room, trying to figure out how he could signal Bonaparte. There had to be _something,_ right? He had to have normal visitors-- well, he had Apollo and Yue anyway, they almost counted as normal-- so there must be--

Something hit his chest, hard. "Hey!" he cried, but the snarling, clawing beast didn't relent; it felt like knives were ripping through his avatar, and shit, Bonaparte had made it _bleed,_ too, of course-- he'd thought the burn was bad enough--

"Mr. _White,"_ Bonaparte was saying, "Down! Get off-- oh, _dear--"_

He'd been attacked by a tiny dragon. "I thought you said he was your cat," Kers said, dazed, as he touched the blood on his chest. It sure _felt_ real, and his shirt had been shredded.

"He was," Bonaparte said, kneeling down by him. "He takes different shapes here, I've-- oh _dear."_ He reached out and touched Kers' chest, and the warmth from his healing programming spread over his body... and, shit if that didn't start a whole _different_ series of feelings. "What on Earth are you doing here?"

"He doesn't like me very much, does he?"

"He's very protective," Bonaparte said distractedly. "Hold still."

Kers stilled and watched Bonaparte's face. His avatar in the Stream was pretty similar to the blurry 'most recently available' photo Kers had seen when he looked up the news reports. He'd been an informatics professor at a community college, before....

Thirty people wounded. Twenty-four dead.

He'd used a knife for some of them.

Bonaparte's touch was light and gentle. He was a damn good programmer. He was--

"There," Bonaparte said. "I'll just need to reprogram your shirt--"

Kers caught Bonaparte's wrist before he could move his hand fully away. It felt _real._ Kers could sense the pulse at Bonaparte's wrist.

"I'm not real," Bonaparte said, as if he could sense Kers' thoughts.

"Yeah, I don't think I care much about that," Kers said softly.

"Is that why you're here?" Bonaparte's eyes were so, so green. Kers wondered if they'd been like that....

Aw, shit. "Yeah," he said. "I guess so."

Bonaparte shook his head. "Go home," he said. "You shouldn't be here. It's not safe."

Kers didn't let go. "So how'd you know I was here?" he asked. "Just the dragon? Or did you tie into the avatar?"

"Mr. White operates independently," Bonaparte said. He was looking at his wrist, and Kers' fingers curled around it. "You should go home," he repeated.

"Talk to me," Kers said. "Please. I just....Just talk to me."

"I'm not sure what to say," Bonaparte said. "I'm a monster. I'm not even alive."

"Would you have said no to me when you were?"

Bonaparte's chuckle was wry and unsettled. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I would have. Go home, Kers. Be safe."

"I don't wanna be safe."

"Yes," Bonaparte said. "I know."

And then the son-of-a-bitch _kicked_ him, and he was half-naked on his bed, back in the apartment. "He _kicked_ me," he said into the emptiness. And now he was hard, and alone, in piss-soaked underwear, and Bonaparte had been so fucking _close._ "Fuck," he said, and got up to shower.

There was no point in trying not to think about it; it was all he could think of, Bonaparte's pretty face and green, green eyes and those thin, perfectly shaped hands. He got the sher going as quickly as he could, and soaped up under the lukewarm water, getting to his dick as the spray heated up.

Sex in the Stream could be anything you wanted; the most extreme fetishes became safe in a virtual world. John had done plenty of stuff himself, though he never went for the _really_ weird stuff. There'd been that time with the two girls from Utopia and the squid, and the guy who'd duplicated himself so he could fuck John's mouth and ass....

But right now, all he wanted was simple, was Bonaparte's hands on him (and he didn't give a fuck if they weren't real, if it wasn't real, if Bonaparte was just a ghost), Bonaparte's _dick,_ in his mouth or ass or hell, just his hand, just _touching_ him, just his taste in John's mouth and his pretty fingers on John's skin and oh _shit_ he was coming so hard the world wanted to go _white._

He washed up for a while and turned the water off. He said "Fuck," again, to the stillness, because it was about the only word that made sense. He'd only been kicked once before, when he was new and a sysadmin thought he was getting too frisky with her wife. (Maybe she'd had a point.) He toweled off his hair and thought about going out.

He could find a new job. He didn't have to get involved in all this, the killings, the freakiness, Craig's habitual glowering. He could leave whenever he wanted to.

He got dressed and left the apartment.

He needed to get laid, which didn't happen at 2 in the afternoon on a Sunday unless you were really desperate or willing to pay. John wasn't sure he was _that_ desperate, and he was too broke to even consider the second option. And none of it would be what he wanted. What he wanted didn't exist.

So he walked along the park instead, watching happy couples and their yammering kids, and half-hoped someone would start some shit with him, just to give him something to do. Radio would probably have thought of something, but Radio's brilliant plans were what had gotten John into all this shit in the first place.

His cell went off, which saved him from thinking about it any further. Apollo. "What, Timmy fell in the well?"

"Fuck off," Apollo said cheerfully. "You do something to Bonaparte?"

"The fuck could I do to Bonaparte?" The leaves were turning, he noticed.

"He's in sleep mode. He never cycles into sleep mode. And his last contact was you."

"How do you know that?" Apollo could be creepy as hell sometimes.

"'Cause I know stuff. Look, what happened? You're not supposed to be dipping in. And Craig's getting twitchy."

John smirked in spite of himself. "How can you tell?"

"Very funny," Apollo snapped back, but John could hear the smile in it. "Look, if anything--"

"I just talked to him," John said. "That's all. And then he kicked me." Okay, maybe he was still pissed about that. He was only human.

"What'd he kick you for?"

"Ask him!"

"I can't ask him, he's in sleep mode!"

John kicked his foot savagely at a rock on the path. It skittered off into a trash bin. "I don't know," he said.

"You got any _ideas?"_ Apollo prompted.

"Let me think," John said. He killed the call and walked home.

  
Sleep mode wasn't sleep, which was why Bonaparte rarely indulged in it. It was pointless, a mere shadow of what he'd once experienced. And with no chance of awakening next to _her..._

But sleep mode was emptiness, blessedly free of thought. Free of emotions-- he was still oddly annoyed to realize a ghost could still feel them-- and free of worry and obsession. His mind needed the silence.

The difficulty was that, once you were out of sleep mode, nothing had changed. There was no sense of refreshment or renewal, like waking from a long rest. Instead, Bonaparte's mind returned to the same patterns it had been tracing when he first went into sleep mode. Seven hours, and nothing had changed--

Except it hadn't been seven hours at all. The status board was lit up like a kaleidoscope, informing him there had been three surface-level intrusions and one unauthorized penetration of his inner office (and how _galling_ was it that 'unauthorized penetration' brought up the mental image of Kers, that damning grin of his being one of the things that had driven Bonaparte to sleep mode in the first place).

And wasn't it just _appropriate_ that Kers himself was the source of the intrusions, and appeared to be sitting in his lobby this instant? And why was Mr. White--

He sighed and adjusted the interface.

Kers was sitting cross-legged in the center of the reception area. Shirtless. Bonaparte realized that he'd never spent too much time on that aspect of the avatar-- his body would be the default, from neck to--

"What are you doing here?"

"Apollo and the cop were in a tizzy," he shrugged. "Told 'em I'd check up on you." His chest was streaked with blood. Mr. White--

Was in the corner, chewing on something.

"What did you--"

"He likes ham," Kers said cheerfully.

He did, in fact. He had even when he was alive.

"You gave my cat ham."

"He's a dragon now." Kers got up, and Bonaparte tried not to notice the flaws in the default chest.

Kers followed his gaze anyway. "We should customize this," he said, "I'd probably get better tips from-- Bonaparte?"

"Why are you here?"

"I told you," he said. "Yue and Apollo were--"

"That's not why you're here."

"Then I guess you know why," Kers said softly. "Same as when you kicked me."

"You're stubborn, aren't you," Bonaparte said.

Kers grinned slow and easy, not at all like a man whose avatar was streaked with blood and who would likely be kicked at any moment. Something in Bonaparte's chest twisted.

"You're back!" Apollo cried, and they both jumped. "Hey, Bonaparte, we were--"

Bonaparte reacted purely on instinct.

"You kicked him," Kers said, after a moment.

"I suppose I did."

Kers' laughter was full, and rich, and continued as they sealed the office once more and left Mr. White to his hambone.


End file.
